Like A Burning City
by What Ithacas Mean
Summary: They are both scarred. A series of not exactly linear vignettes featuring Leliana and the female Aeducan Grey Warden.
1. Like A Burning City

**Title:** "Like a Burning City"

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. There's no question on this point.

_Leliana and the female Aeducan Grey Warden. The first time._

_Title taken from the St. Vincent Millay sonnet, "Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now." It is possible that I have taken liberties of the imagination with Leliana's backstory - but I don't think, really, that one can suffer the kinds of "terrible things" that are implied and still come away unmarked.  
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* * *

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Aud Aeducan smells of steel and leather, harsh lye soap and old blood, and something else, some quality of granite and musk and thunderstorms that is uniquely, peculiarly _her._ She is all muscle and sinew, a leanness Leliana finds painful to behold because of the history behind it: scant rations and a body driven beyond all sane limits day after day for months now. Her form is as much a weapon as her blades, and one which receives far less exacting care.

They are both scarred.

Leliana has had more than two years to grow accustomed to the marks on her flesh. No one will ever compliment the silken smoothness of her thighs again, or the creamy perfection of the skin across her shoulderblades. The questioners in Val Royeaux saw to that. She escaped before they could ruin her hands (and she still shudders, remembering how near a thing that was), but she is lucky to have regained full use of her arms. And no healer in the world can make the proud flesh of a healed flogging, or the white and greyish-pink reminders of white-hot irons, anything but ugly.

It hardly mattered in the Chantry. She thought herself grown beyond mourning the ruin of her vanity: she is old enough to know that beauty is never one of nature's most lasting gifts. And she has felt the Maker's hand on her heart. A rose can still flourish in the midst of destruction.

She is not naive enough to consider herself a rose. She has done many wicked things, and no amount of atoning can undo what her hands have wrought. Or what other hands have wrought unto her.

In the warm, lamplit dimness of Aud's narrow tent, only a thin shift between her and the other woman's gaze, she hesitates.

The tent is not large enough for them to stand. They are both kneeling on Aud's thin woollen bedroll, facing each other. Aud's shirt is unlaced to the navel. The lamplight shades her dark skin to the rich, deep bronze of ironbark. Her breasts lie small and slack over protuberant ribs criss-crossed with scars, from old, ragged white cords, to the most recent, still red and inflamed. The hollow planes of her stomach look like bruises.

It hurts to look at her, but Leliana cannot look away. The warmth rising in her belly trembles her fingers. Foolish. She knows how to do this.

She _used_ to know how to do this.

"Aud." Her voice cracks. Nerves, and so many other things.

Aud lifts her head. To call her hawk-faced falls short of justice. Her nose is a prow between the hard wings of her cheekbones, her jaw a stubborn jut, all sharp angles and leashed energy. Her eyes are gold-brown at the iris, dark, intent. There is little about the dwarf that is soft; little that she allows to be. She allows it now, fondness and care mingled with hesitation in her glance, and Leliana knows it for a gift.

A precious one. "I am not... unblemished," she says, on a mouth dry with some unnameable combination of desire and shame. "Since... I haven't..."

"It's not like you to be lost for words." Aud leans into her shoulder, all gentleness. Her warm breath stirs the hairs on Leliana's upper arm, tickling along her nerves, and Lelianna shivers as Aud's muscled abdomen flexes against her hip. Her touch is a friend's, reassurance and care, even as Leliana feels her careful restraint, the yearning under her hands. "Since Orlais?" Aud asks, soft.

"Val Royeaux." Leliana closes her eyes. If she sees pity in the Warden's face it will break her. Better not to look. Better not to see at all. "I have scars."

She does not know what she expects. A cutting reply, perhaps. They all have scars, after all: even the mages have been kissed by darkspawn claws more than once by now. Maybe it is merely vanity that makes her hesitate. Vanity, and the fact that she has not been this vulnerable to any living being since Marjolaine.

"Ah," Aud murmurs. And gently, very gently: "May I see?"

It is the gentleness, perhaps, that allows Leliana to move, to lift her shift over her head and lay herself bare. The air is cool on her breasts. She feels her nipples harden, sensitive, tight with desire and the knot in her throat that is so many unspoken things.

Aud is behind her now, a light warmth just above her skin. "Nasty work." But there is no pity in it, or revulsion, only matter-of-fact assessment, and Leliana shivers as one calloused finger traces a line of keloid tissue from her shoulderblade down across her flank. "Did it take very long to train yourself to draw a bow again, after?"

"Months." Long, painful months, where only determination that she would not let Marjolaine's betrayal cripple her and the need, at first, not to be a burden on the Chantry hermit who gave her shelter when she stumbled across the border from Orlais and onto his doorstep kept her working to stretch the scars. Leliana swallows. The bow she draws now is still lighter than the longbow her younger self once spanned with ease. Her breath catches on the knot in her throat as Aud's finger trails lower. "You are not - You do not -"

"Brave Leliana." Aud's breath tickles the hair by her ear. The kiss that follows in its wake does more than tickle: nothing chaste, all heat and tongue and promises, and when Leliana twists to meet her gaze her eyes are steady, bottomless. "You hardly need me to tell you that you're beautiful. Any number of scars cannot take that from you." Aud cups her cheek, hands that've broken necks and hewn limbs light as the touch of a feather. Her voice husks. "Brave, beautiful girl."

This time it is Leliana who kisses, teeth and passion and promises and life, Maker, _life_ like a talisman against the dark.

There are few words, then. And very little restraint.


	2. Her Fellowship To Die With Us

"Her Fellowship To Die With Us"

_Title adapted from Henry V's St. Crispin's Day speech.  
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* * *

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_Three days outside Lothering._

The evening sun lances through trees green with the first, faintest flush of spring. A stream burbles by the roadside, and at the campfire Morrigan and Alistair are eyeing each other across the flames. The breeze from the west brings chill, clean air to shiver under their cloaks, though neither Sten nor the mabari warhound Reaver seem to notice. The former is soaked from washing in the stream, the latter tail-waggingly happy - and wetly pungent - from rolling in it.

Three days out of Lothering, and Leliana had not realised how the stink of desperate fear weighed her down until it is no longer in her nostrils.

She leans on her knees, fletching new arrowshafts to replace the ones broken in their handful of skirmishes. The work is familiar to her, glue and feathers and a thin, sharp knife: work that occupies the hands, not the mind. Her mind is occupied with other thoughts.

They are peculiar, her new travelling companions. The qunari giant and the apostate mage are on the surface the oddest, but she's begun to think the Wardens well-matched to their company. They _all _think she is mad, of course. It's understandable. And perhaps she is, but she has prayed for so long, prayed until her soul was hollow and she thought her heart would break of it, and she _knows_. The Maker hasn't turned away from his creation. Not wholly. Not while light and life and beauty yet remain.

She has to believe in miracles. She is, after all, still alive.

"Leliana?"

Aud is dwarven, compact and spare. The mail she wears like a second skin has the battered, well-mended look of armour that's seen hard use. A permanent squint marks the corners of her eyes, but her hands rest easily on the hilts of the paired swords at her waist. Her tone isn't quite the commanding bark she uses in their skirmishes (two already, not counting the bandits just outside Lothering) but it's not the easy one she with which she answers Alistair's teasing, or turns Morrigan's baiting aside, and Leliana tilts her head in question. "Yes, Warden?"

"How long were you in the Chantry?" Aud settles back on her heels in front of her, watching the business of fletching with every evidence of interest.

"Two years, very nearly." Leliana keeps her voice light. "A pleasant change from minstrelsy. It is restful to stay in one place for a time, yes? And the Reverend Mother was very kind to me."

"You're rusty," the Warden says, flat and considering. "We need to fix that."

Leliana blinks and stares. "Rusty?"

"Out of practice. Slow." Aud grins. "Easy meat. On your feet, my dear lay sister. It's time to start beating some of the rust off before the darkspawn do you in."

_Oh_, Leliana thinks. _Oh dear._

* * *

It is not Aud with whom Leliana is to spar, on the muddy grass beside the stream, but Alistair. "Um," he says, settling his shield on his arm. "Aud, are you _sure_ you want _me_ to do this?"

_Good question_. Alistair is a warrior in the prime of his training. Leliana is only beginning to reaccustom herself to the press of armour across her shoulders, the weight of weapons against her frame. She's a good archer, but it has been a long time since she truly _fought_. _Ah, Maker, she is right. I _am _rusty. _She tastes sweat and nerves: she can't quite stop licking her lips.

"Most soldiers fight with sword and shield, Alistair." Aud looks positively gleeful. It is an unsettling expression on the Warden's grim, hawkish face. "I know it's a shock, but you're the closest to normal we've got around here."

"Me, normal? Now there's a switch." Alistair grins at Leliana. "Don't hurt me, sister. I'm only doing our fair leader's bidding."

"I, hurt you?" Leliana finds her weapons are in her hands, sword and dagger at once strangely unfamiliar and disturbing natural in her grasp. Anticipation rises, a hot, intoxicating trickle in her gut. Ah, Maker, she has missed having a _challenge_. And a little harmless competition never hurt anyone, no? Her lips twitch on a grin of her own. "But _I_ am the rusty one, am I not? Should it not be me asking you?"

"He won't hurt you." Aud slaps her shoulder and steps back, amused and intent. "Much."

"Promises, promises," Leliana murmurs, but Alistair is already circling, and she has to turn to follow him, boots squelching on the sodden ground.

Alistair's fast. Blessed _Andraste_, he's fast. Leliana barely turns his first flurry of blows aside, her swordarm jarred to the shoulder by the strength of his violence, and reels back. The fair-haired Warden advances like some unstoppable force, wielding his sword - and _Maker_, they're sparring with _edged _weapons and it's enough to sicken her stomach with tension - like a hammer. Leliana catches one blow on her dagger and tries a counter - it should _faze _him, Maker's breath, but he twists aside and smashes his shield into her hip.

_Ow._ She scrambles back, splashing her heels in the stream. Her breath rasps loud in her own ears. Sweat stings her eyes. She blinks it away, sidesteps his follow-up downward slash, and drives a cut towards his bare neck -

His shield is there ahead of her, its rim slamming her wrist. A starburst of pain staggers her vision. Her sword drop from numb fingers to land on the grass.

"Stop!"

Aud's voice, a whipcrack. Alistair obeys instantly, pulling his blow and stepping back. Leliana gasps in relief and cradles her wrist in her uninjured hand. Not broken: she knows what a broken bone feels like and thank the Maker, this isn't it, but dear Maker, it's going to hurt. She manages a ragged grin nonetheless. "I almost had you, yes?"

Alistair chuckles. "Nearly indeed."

"Almost wins no battles," Aud says from behind her, but there's unwilling amusement in her voice. "Don't turn around," she adds, a quiet, thoughtful edge to her tone. "Tell me, Leliana. Were you ever injured... here?"

A light pressure on her shoulderblades. Aud's hands, over leather armour. Leliana clamps down on her instinctive flinch. _Startling like a skittish filly, Leliana? We can't have that, hmm?_ She controls her breathing. Her voice is very nearly steady when she says, "I - you could say that, yes."

After two years, she's _almost _used to the way the hard knots of scar tissue still pull a little when she moves. You could call _torture _an injury, if you didn't care for the niceties of accuracy. But if they know the whole truth of what she was, what she _did_, it is likely that they will withdraw their tentative trust, and so she does not elaborate. Silence is not a lie, though it might feel like one.

The pressure on her back vanishes. Leliana turns. The Warden has an appraising furrow in her brow.

"Thought so. Your extension is weak, and you hold yourself too stiffly." Aud offers a smile, one that makes her grim features seem for an instant less hard. "But you're one of us now. We can work on it."

"Maker's breath!" Alistair exclaims. "Not _more_ sparring? Don't we have enough work already chopping darkspawn into itty-bitty pieces?"

"More sparring. Always more sparring, Alistair." Aud's grin is predatory. "But this time it's my turn. Ready, Leliana?"

_You're one of us now._ Leliana inhales, and reclaims her fallen sword, ignoring the throbbing in her wrist. "My dear Warden," she says, lightly, "I am at your service."

She means it.


	3. The Bitter Past Is Not Erased

**3. "The Bitter Past Is Not Erased"**

_Okay, folks. I have a request. Tell me what I'm doing wrong here, and what I should do with this next?_

_And yeah, if you think you recognise the lyrics below as an adapted form of Steeleye Span's "Long Lankin," that's because it is. The Lamkin/Lankin/Langkin ballad tradition is bloody creepy, btw._

* * *

"Alistair has been telling me stories about Orlesian minstrels," Aud says, with deceptive mildness.

Leliana's fingers fumble on the strings of her lyre. A child's mistake, but the Warden's words are sufficiently unforeseen to jar her.

They have been sitting shoulder-to-shoulder by the fireside, easy companionship: it is Alistair's turn to take first watch, and neither of them are ready to join Sten and Morrigan in slumber. "Oh?" she says lightly, and forces her fingers back into motion. Not aimless strumming: a tune soothing to the ear and complicated enough to require some portion of her concentration. The _Lay of Grey Lankin_ is commonly heard in Orlais, but she doubts any Ferelden is familiar with the words. "I thought I was the storyteller in this company. Our Alistair must be developing unforeseen talents. Morrigan will be so very shocked, will she not?"

She expects a snort, or perhaps even a chuckle. She does not expect the warm grasp on her forearm, or Aud's careful, considering tilt of the head. "You do that very well, you know," Aud says, still mild. Firelight reflects bloody steel from her gold-dark eyes. "Deflect questions. You're good at it. You're good at any number of things I would not have expected from a simple wandering minstrel turned Chantry anchorite. Just because I was born underground doesn't mean I know nothing of the world, Leliana. So tell me, how many Orlesian minstrels serve as spies?"

_And are you one of them?_ It is unsaid, but Leliana hears it anyway. She has been careless with her cover, let her enthusiasm and her certainty get the better of her - it doesn't help that she has not _liked_ lying to the Wardens, even by omission. The years in the Chantry have not changed what she is, not wholly, but deceit is no longer quite as natural to her as it was once. In another time and place, such negligence would have already cost her her life.

_Grey Lankin_, that lay of treachery and blood, is no longer so soothing to her ear.

"Some." Leliana swallows. If she lies now, and is discovered, at the very least Aud will never trust her again. So it must be as much truth as she can bear telling. "Not all minstrels are spies. Most are just singers and storytellers. But some... some are what we call bards."

"There's a difference?" Aud's voice is careless, casual, but the Warden has a mind like a steel trap, and Leliana knows her apparent inattention is misleading.

"In Orlais," and she must pick her words carefully now, even more carefully than before, "bards are minstrels, and more. Spies, as you say. Many work alone, or in small groups, doing the bidding of a patron who pays for their services. In Orlais, you see, there is much rivalry among the high-born. They fight over land, influence and the favour of the empress. They cannot do this openly, because it is _impolite_, and in public they wear smiling faces and pretend to be civil. In secret they plot and scheme to destroy each other.." A trace of scorn colours her tone. There is no reason to hide how she feels about the noble vipers of Orlais, not here. "It is a game completely meaningless to anyone but its players." _And its victims._

"You seem to know quite a bit about these bards." A barbed observation, for all its quietness. Aud is still leaning against her shoulder, but Leliana can feel the tension in the Warden's muscled arm. This is the rock on which their fragile trust will root or break, and it hardly matters that it is no longer truly a question.

"I spent most of my adult life as one." Leliana sets her lyre down, carefully, and covers the hand that still holds her wrist with her own. Aud's skin is warm, almost hot: she has admitted before now that she believes it is the taint in her blood, burning her up from the inside like a charcoal-burner's flame. A slow death sentence, in the name of necessity. _Necessity _is a dirty word. It etches the back of Leliana's teeth with bile. _Please believe me. _"But I swear to you, I left that part of my life behind me when I came to Ferelden, to the Chantry. The Maker brought me here."

"In my place..." Aud leans her head on Leliana's shoulder. Her breath smells of mint and onions, and something else, some fainter fragrance of granite and old blood. Her voice is layered with many things, weariness and regret not least among them. "Loghain has a price on my head, mine and Alistair's. In my place, would you trust yourself? Could you dare?"

"_Loghain _has not seen both you and Alistair wake screaming from nightmares of the archdemon. _I_ believe you two are our best hope against the Blight. And be reasonable, my friend." Leliana's lips twitch. If Aud truly distrusts her, the Warden would hardly rest so companionably against her side. Both of them know that, which makes this - what? A test? _Or are the stories of the dwarves true after all, that they keep their enemies closer than their lovers?_ She has the sudden absurd whimsy to lean down and see if Aud's lips are as inviting as they look. _Bad bard. That is _not _the best way to inspire her trust right now, truly. _"If I wanted to do you harm, one of us would be dead already, no?"

Now Aud snorts. "At least you're not overconfident."

"I _have _seen you fight, dear Aud. And you are aware you're nearly impossible to come upon unprepared, yes? I have noticed this, too. What _do _they teach you in Orzammar?"

A sudden cold stiffness. Leliana's stomach knots. She has overstepped: Aud does not mention her life before the Grey Wardens. Not ever, except to share bits and pieces of dwarven knowledge of darkspawn, their habits, their weaknesses, and how better to kill them.

"Survival," Aud says, without inflection. "Orzammar teaches survival." Then she exhales, as if deliberately letting go of some dark tension, and folds her fingers around Leliana's palm. "That tune you played before, does it have words?"

"It does, yes." Leliana feels her mouth twist, wry. "Though I do not much like to sing them. It is scarcely a cheerful song."

"That's appropriate." Aud grins. "We're hardly a cheerful optimistic little band. Teach me?"

And it is such a relief to see the Warden grin, to find herself still accepted, that she does.

_Beware of Grey Lankin, that lives amongst the wood._

_Beware the gorse, beware the moor, beware of Grey Lankin_

_Be sure the doors are bolted well, lest Lankin should come near._

Leliana wonders how many people imagine the words only a tale, with no truth in them. Aud, she thinks, is not one of them.

_You can tell the truth with lies, and lie with the truth. And no one ever trusts without the risk of betrayal, or loves without loss.  
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She knows how _she _learned that lesson. But who taught Aud, and at what cost? _  
_


	4. Though Your Promise Count For Nothing

**"Though Your Promise Count For Nothing"**

_Title from the Leonard Cohen song, "Heart With No Companion."_

_("Though your promise count for nothing/ You must keep it nonetheless.")_

* * *

_Outside Denerim, the night before the final battle._

Another day will bring them within sight of Denerim.

The sky is a dull reddish-black, starless and tainted. The vanguard and the skirmishers have been clashing with the horde's stragglers for days. Aud stomps and mutters and finally directs Eamon to take half their forces and encircle Denerim from the east, "_because if we fail your task will be to contain the horde until more Grey Wardens can arrive from Jader. Contain it, Guerrin!"_ and Leliana does not think anyone else sees the terrible weariness in the Warden's eyes when she sends Anora, kept within reach these many days, with the arl. A prisoner, yes, but also a safeguard: _if we fail_ means _when we are dead_, and someone must live to rebuild Ferelden.

Alistair is a Warden, after all, and cannot be sent to safety.

But there is a little time yet, here at the end of everything.

There are benefits to being Ferelden's general. There is a tent, large enough for several people. There is a table, strewn with maps and troop dispositions and plans. There is wine, which Leliana pours, as carefully as though she were serving the empress's table at a banquet and not all but alone.

It's useful, to have an assassin who owes you a favour and a mabari who knows when to behave. Zevran and Reaver between them will make sure none of the nobles and commanders - even their fellow travelling companions - will disturb Aud before daybreak. There have been enough strategy meetings and command gatherings. This is Leliana's last chance to be alone with her Warden, and she is determined not to waste it.

Aud reclines on her bedroll, eyes half-closed, fingertips absently caressing the cherrywood frame of Leliana's lyre where it sits by her side. Without armour, her weapons piled neatly within reach, she looks so much smaller, and Leliana quashes a sudden fiercely protective spike of feeling as she carries the wine-filled goblets from the table and settles cross-legged by Aud's shoulder, leaning into warmth and the other woman's scent.

_Maker, let me not lose her, too._

"Last chance." Aud props her chin on her fist and glances up. "You'll be safer if you go with Eamon in the morning."

"You would deny me a front-row seat for the last act of our gallant play? Cruel Warden." The wine is a Nevarran red, a semi-decent vintage. Probably from Eamon's cellars, and Leliana swallows rich bitterness. They've had this argument already, and Aud lost. "If it were safety I cared for, dear Aud, I would hardly be here now."

"True enough." Aud takes her goblet from Leliana's grasp. Their fingers brush, warm on the stem. Leliana is conscious - so conscious - of how sensitive she is to the other woman's touch. "You seem to have a very casual attitude towards self-preservation, my dear bard. Hurling yourself headlong at impossible challenges. Darkspawn. Blights. Touchy over-protective homicidal dwarven Wardens."

There is a grin under Aud's words, and Leliana can't help but return it. "Ah, but I trust in the Maker," she says lightly, only half-joking. "I know he loves us and wants us to be happy, yes? And look! Here we are."

A choked laugh. Aud sputters on wine. "_This _is how the Maker shows his love? Dear Leliana, I hate to break it to you, but if that's so, your Maker has a sense of humour worthy of a dwarf."

"He's not just _my_ Maker." But this is one argument Leliana will never win. She's come to accept that, and so she lets it go, trailing her fingers through Aud's cropped dark hair. "Stubborn dwarf." A fond murmur.

"Stubborn bard." Equally fond.

"We are well-matched, no?" Leliana rolls the wine on her tongue, cradles her lover's head, and tries not to listen to the mutter of the army camp outside their tent. Time is running out. So much has changed already. Tomorrow -

But she will not think of tomorrow, yet.

"Well-matched indeed." Aud sips her wine with a catlike grace, odd in one lying almost prone. Her gaze is distant, as though watching something Leliana cannot see. "When this is over..." An exhalation. "What will you do after this, dear bard?"

Leliana blinks. They've never spoken of an _after_. At first, the task before them loomed so vast, and the odds of their survival so small, that there was little point talking about _after_ when even _next week_ was out of their hands. Later, perhaps, their focus had become so sharp that neither of them could imagine what an _after_ might look like.

It is as though their time travelling held the world in abeyance. But now, _now _the play is all but done. The final act is underway, and the thought that there might be an _after_ fills her with an equal measure of hope and terror. "Well, my dear Warden," she says. There is an unfamiliar hesitation on her tongue. A terrible vulnerability in her belly. "That must depend, I suppose, on what _you _mean to do."

"I -" Aud's voice catches, a soft darkness in her eyes, hope and grief and something else, less simple. "Oh, _Leliana_. Even if Morrigan's plan works, there's a fair chance I won't survive. The archdemon _knows _it takes a Warden to kill it."

This is true. Aud has never made promises she cannot keep. Never said _always_, or _forever._ Leliana has not known, til now, if her lover has even wanted to.

"And I never -" Aud swallows, curls her fingers around Leliana's wrist. "I'm a Warden," she says, quietly. "I couldn't expect - couldn't _hope _- for anything beyond what you've already given me. I have no right even to ask -"

"Dear Aud." Leliana sets her goblet aside. The wine is tart on her lips, stinging cracked and windchapped skin. A sweet pain. A sweet hope. There might be an _after_ for them, after all. "You stubborn, silly dwarf. I love you."

"I -" Aud's gold-brown eyes are shadowed with gratitude and other, nameless things. Her throat works, muscles moving under bronze-dark skin, and when she reaches up to brush her fingers across Leliana's cheek there is a quiet longing in her glance. "I'm yours, dear bard." Softly: "As long as you care to have me."

"That... could be a very long time. A very long time, indeed." Leliana dips her lips to Aud's, and breathes, "Do you promise?" against the Warden's warm skin.

Aud's glance is very, very dark. Her mouth tastes of wine, heat and thunderstorms and Nevarran spice. "You have my word on it," she murmurs, quiet like a prayer.

Or a vow.

"Good," Leliana says, and stops talking to concentrate on the feel of Aud's living body against her skin.

The night is not long enough for everything she wants to say. A lifetime is not long enough for everything she wants to say. But she does not need words to speak, and it is enough to make a start.

There will be time, after the battle. Time to say the rest.

Aud has made a promise.

* * *

_Thanks for the help last time, guys._

_I dunno if I'm done, or what. This feels like a natural end-point. On the other hand, I've been having far too much fun with this. So I guess we'll see. Anyone with strong feelings either way, please let me know.  
_


	5. For Your So Passing Sake

**"**For Your So Passing Sake"

_Title from the Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet, "Cherish you then the hope I shall forget."_

_It's been a while, and it may be another while before I update again. I'm deeply unsure of this section of this piece in particular. It falls somewhere between "The Bitter Past Is Not Erased" and "Like A Burning City," after Leliana reveals her history with Marjolaine, but before it is settled in Denerim, and I'm afraid I'm not hitting the right emotional tone.  
_

_But, anyway. Onwards!_

_

* * *

_

_Redcliff, the evening after the defeat of the demon. _

Redcliff Castle is stifling quiet with tension and the aftermath of battle. The breeze across the lake brings with it the scent of char and carrion. The dark plume of the pyres of the dead has been a smear against the sky for hours. Now the sun is setting, casting fiery crimson light through the window embrasures onto stained tapestries and stone.

_This is what victory looks like, _Leliana thinks, following a silent servant - an elf, stone-faced and grim - along the hall, away from Isolde's tearful relief, Irving's patience, his templars' watchfulness, and Connor's baffled incomprehension. No different to Kinloch Hold, except the Tower of Magi wasn't an arling's village, enough like ones she has known in Orlais to ripple a shiver of painful nostalgia through her gut. Isolde's Orlesian tones, the unFereldan decoration of the castle... It feels like a reprieve to plead exhaustion, put away her lyre, and snag a servant's sleeve to take her in search of Aud.

"In here, ma'am," the servant says, gesturing to a closed oaken door, and barely waits for her nod before he turns away.

Well, the conduct of Isolde's servants is none of her concern. Doubtless he is still shaken from Connor's demon-abetted reign, Maker help him - and the poor boy, too. But it makes her wary, and she checks the lie of her daggers in their sheaths before she opens the door. Sometimes she thinks that a lifetime in the peace of the Chantry wouldn't be enough to erase the habits of suspicion that _salope _Marjolaine trained into her. Two precious years blunted them but a little.

It's not a trap. It is - it must be - one of the rooms that Isolde offered them, so that they might rest before they depart in search of Andraste's ashes. (_Andraste's ashes_. If the Maker guides their hands, she might _see_ the ashes of holy Andraste herself.) Three packs rest in one corner, and someone has made up a pair of stuffed straw pallets beside the mouldering, ancient four-poster. The linens are fresh, but judging by appearances, no one's used any of the furniture since Maric was a boy.

Aud stands in the window, outlined in the failing light. Still fully armoured, her knuckles clenching and unclenching around the hilts of her swords: when she glances over her shoulder, Leliana finds it easy to see why the servant was eager to leave. _Disturbed_, on the Warden, looks a lot like _angry_, and no one cares to push the boundaries of anyone who fights like Aud of Orzammar.

"Ah, so there you are!" Leliana says, deliberately airy, and shuts the door behind her. "Your disappearing trick had me a little worried. I thought you would be with Alistair, no? But he and Bann Teagan are off with Zevran on a bet to get Sten drunk, and Wynne has cornered one of the mages the First Enchanter brought with him. I believe they are discussing the nature of the Fade?" She leans back, feeling smooth wood against her spine. "And Morrigan -"

"Told me if she spent any more time within walls, I should expect corpses." Aud tilts her head back, harsh profile weary and lined. Her voice is quieter than Leliana expects. "She'll rejoin us after we're on the road tomorrow. Don't worry for the witch, Leliana. She's too much the pragmatist to bring trouble down on her head, or ours. And I set Reaver after her, just in case."

"Worry for Morrigan?" Leliana sniffs, but in honesty, it's hard to deny. The witch makes her uneasy, but in their time travelling together, she's come to be more uneasy when she does not know where to lay hands on all her companions. It feels nearly unnatural to be separate, within walls, not encamped or crammed into a room or stableloft in some tiny crossroad inn. In lieu of protest, she says, "There is something troubling you, my friend."

Aud snorts. "Apart from the Blight?" She shrugs a shoulder. "Tell me, how did the Lady Isolde seem to you?"

"A fool." Leliana doesn't trouble to keep the acid from her tone. "For an Orlesian noblewoman, she's a very poor liar, no? And her intrigues have led her son and husband near to ruin. But you - you are hardly troubled by _la crétine _Isolde. What is really the matter, hmm?"

Carefully, Aud turns away from the window. Carefully, she takes her hands from the hilts of her swords, smoothes the hang of her chainmail, clasps her fingers over her beltbuckle. Reddish sunlight lightens her dark hair to something closer to the deep ironbark-bronze of her skin. Even taut and weary, she has a harsh, pointed charisma. Unbeautiful, but in any company every eye will find the dwarf first. Leliana swallows the yearning in her belly. The Warden is a friend, not a mark to be seduced.

(Though it would be so easy to give in - a careless touch, a teasing invitation: there's heat in the Warden's gold-brown eyes, and Leliana has years of practice fanning sparks.)

"Alistair gave me a rose." Aud's voice is quiet, her expression unreadable.

"He's a good man," Leliana says, after a moment's pause. Now is not the time to let her feelings leak, although it is an agony she must swallow. Alistair _is _a good man, if young. His blushing infatuation with Aud might have made Leliana feel old in debauchery, were she not simply more practiced at hiding the same emotions.

"That's the problem." Aud's half-smile is bitter. "Leaving aside the fact that he's Maric's son, and he hasn't yet realised that with Cailan dead _that_ is going to complicate everything he does. I'm not. Not a good person. What he feels, it's not for me. It's for the idea of me he's carrying around in his head. But I don't want to break him."

"Aud," Leliana says, helplessly, and crosses the room in five strides, setting her lyre down at the bottom of the bed and taking the Warden's hand. "You are a good person, no? I see it, Alistair sees it. _Wynne _sees it."

"'Good' is relative." Aud's jaw tightens. "Alistair thinks the Grey Wardens are honourable and noble and brave. I'm a dwarf. When it comes to fighting the darkspawn, _honour_ is a luxury. I'll do whatever is necessary to succeed, _regardless _of the cost. You understand. Wynne understands. I think even Sten and Morrigan understand."

"But not Alistair?" But Leliana knows the answer. Alistair believes in the honour of the Grey Wardens like a talisman. He holds to it the same way she holds to her trust in the Maker, as an anchor in an uncertain world. "Do you want me to..." She hesitates. "Talk to him?"

Aud sighes, and leans into Leliana's shoulder. This close, Leliana is abnormally aware of the other woman's scent, steel and granite, musk and leather. The warmth of her against the line of her arm. She swallows, dry-mouthed, and inhales to calm the drumbeat of her pulse. "Let him keep his innocence," she says, softly, resigned. "As long as he can." A breath. "Leliana?"

"Yes?"

Aud's smile is not bitter, not this time. "You're a good listener, bard. A good friend."

"So I should hope," Leliana says, with all the lightness she can muster, and taps Aud's wrist. "Now, you must tell me! We are headed for Denerim tomorrow, yes? When was the last time you went _shopping_?"


	6. The Only Words We Know

**6. "The Only Words We Know"**

_Title from Richard Thompson, "Guns Are The Tongues".  
_

_Any comments would be welcome.  
_

* * *

_Somewhere between Redcliff and Denerim._

It is very easy to make an ally into an enemy, and so much harder to make them a friend.

Aud lies in her tent, staring at the stained canvas and the darkness overhead. It is a warm night, and the others have largely elected to sleep without a roof, but even now she finds it hard to relax - to sleep - under the emptiness of the night sky. It is easy to ignore when she has things to consider, kill, _do_. But sleep comes hard, even when she's riding the drained edge of exhaustion. The canvas is a thin enough veil. It can't keep out the nightmares.

At least under it, she doesn't feel as though she might fall off the world, into the sky.

(When Leliana tried to show her pictures in the stars, she nearly threw up. It was shameful. And humiliating.)

There are things she _knows_. Knows in her bones, knows the way she has come to know the thrumming in her blood that is the darkspawn taint and the pressure in her temples that warns of their nearness. She learned to read people, in Orzammar, to survive. To play the game, she learned how to manipulate them, to use their flaws and blindnesses - even their virtues - against them without compunction. The only rule is not to betray the house, to hold faith with those who hold faith with you.

And even that rule, much as she has clung to it to vindicate her own sense of honour, is really more of a practical _guideline._

It is because of Orzammar that she knows each of their party is keeping secrets. Zevran is easiest to read. His oath will hold only as long as she looks better than the Crows: it's hard to begrudge him that, when in his place she would do exactly the same. Morrigan... Well. Morrigan's secrets run deep, but for now, Aud judges, she is honest in her aid. Sten keeps his qunari secrets, for the _Beresaad_. Even Wynne and Alistair have things they have not said - although Alistair is too much of a naif to realise what his position as Maric's son means, yet.

_I can't blame them_. She stares at the moving darkness on the canvas. The sounds of the camp outside are quiet, familiar. After all this time, almost comforting. It isn't as though she has no secrets of her own. Eventually they must go to Orzammar, and she must stand revealed before them, an outcast and a kinslayer.

"It would have come to me or thee in the end anyway, Trian," she mutters. _With or without Bhelen's aid._ "We both knew that."

The ache in her heart is not regret. Regret would be without purpose: she would not choose otherwise, even now. But grief will not leave her. Some days it seems as though neither grief nor secrets will ever leave her, and duty is the sole spur that keeps her facing forward.

Perhaps this is why she feels kinship for Leliana, though trust is harder. It is impossible to forget that the other woman is - _was_, if such a thing can really be left behind - a bard. There is a deep grief behind the Orlesian's airy humour and convinced piety; a remorse that might be laughable if it were not so sincere.

The horror in her voice today after the bandit revealed himself as an assassin sent to kill her - in those three syllables, _Marjolaine_ - spoke of other secrets. It was fortunate they are already en route to Denerim, or it might have proved difficult to convince Leliana that she could hardly bring down _more _danger on their party than they were already in.

The bard is stubborn.

Well, they all are.

Aud sits up on her bedroll. Aloud, she says, "Stone curse it." Sleep is impossible.

There is only one thing left to do.

* * *

The air smells of spring leaves and forest growth. For once, the odours of death haven't followed them into camp. The untainted breeze should be a comfort, but it isn't.

On her bedroll, Leliana lies wakeful. The earth's stones seem to seek her every ache through the thin blanket. Somewhere, off in the darkness, Alistair and Morrigan are standing their watches. Their sniping banter has finally died down to silence. The stars overhead are bright in the moonless deep of the sky. It reminds her of childhood, learning to see stories in distant lights; to hear music in the space between one heartbeat and the next; to hear the world _breathe_ and time her motion to its breath.

Lessons that served well, later, as a spy.

_Marjolaine_. A fool to think she could be free so easily. Fear fills her belly like bile every time she thinks of the woman. Her bard-master. A fool to imagine Marjolaine ever loved her. It is so easy to manipulate one who admires you, so easy to shape a child who - like a stray puppy - craves affection and, _needing _to be loved, takes every scrap of attention as proof of regard.

It disgusts her, now. It disgusts her that she had ever wanted to follow in Marjolaine's footsteps, that she had learned to think of murder and betrayal as a _game_, even as so much as hearing Marjolaine's name terrifies her.

Leliana has seen Marjolaine break her enemies with ruthless, delighted cruelty. To one of her bards, one who had betrayed her and fled - by Marjolaine's lights, failing to die at the appointed time would be seen as nothing less than betrayal - Leliana can only imagine how much she will suffer, if she should fall again into her master's hands. And how much Aud and Alistair will suffer, if they should try to defend her.

It is so very clearly a trap.

* * *

_The darkness was warm. She stood in the shadows of the lacquer screen and watched the scene play out on the bed in the centre of the room. Marjolaine's tastes were always... exotic. And unpredictable. Leliana would do her best to please, and more often than not receive cutting words in return. But tonight, with the marquis of Rochaude in her bedchamber, she had outdone herself._

_"Watch, my Leliana," her lady had said. "Watch, and learn. Tonight we break the marquis, yes? Tonight we make him regret disappointing us."_

_She had her part to play. And when Rochaude's screams of pain and pleasure ended, and Marjolaine drew her legs under herself to perch on a bolster like a preening cat, she stepped out from behind the screen and smiled at the marquis' baffled eyes._

_"You have been... indiscreet, marquis," she said, and held up a sealed bundle of his correspondance._

_"Marjolaine?" He twisted - but Marjolaine was an expert in her craft, after all, and his flailing came to naught. "What _is _this?" he demanded, his ragged breath very loud in the quiet room._

_And Marjolaine only smiled._

_"A warning, Rochaude." Leliana laid the bundle beside his cheek and touched his neck with the point of her dagger. Pearls of sweat beaded on his skin, trickling through craggy lines to join the dampness on his pillows. Her voice was a hypnotic croon - practiced at Marjolaine's knee until her master pronounced it adequate - and he stared at her as though fascinated. "Your _only _warning. You have disclosed certain... facts that persons of our mutual acquaintance would prefer to remain unknown. In return for this, it has been arranged for your wife and her family to learn that you prefer underage boywhores from the docks of Val Royeaux."_

_"That's a lie!"_

_"A convincing one, I assure you." She pressed the dagger flat against his pulse, watching it jump against the cold steel. "With more than adequate documentation. If you err again, other... convincing material will come to light. How does the Empress like men who deal with Tevinter these days, marquis? I hear she deals unkindly with noblemen who take in representatives of the Imperial Chantry."_

_He swallowed. His "How dare you?" tried for righteously defiant, and failed miserably._

_"Hold your tongue, Rochaude. Or you will assuredly lose it."_  
_  
She left the chamber on Marjolaine's arm, warmly proud of Marjolaine's words of praise in her ear._

_And three nights later returned to cut his tongue. And his throat.  
_

* * *

"Wake up, Leliana." Aud looms above her, a darker shape in the dim night. "_Leliana_. You're dreaming."

There is bile in her mouth and trembling in her muscles. "_Maker_," she spits, and finds Aud's hands on her shoulders, steadying her up. Her tongue tastes like corpses, and there's a watery roil in her gut she can't quite make stop.

Andraste, if she loses her guts on Aud's boots without even the excuse of being _drunk _it'll be worse than humiliating.

"Steady now?" Aud says softly, after a moment.

"I am, yes." Leliana's mouth twists. _Steadier, at least._ She has not dreamed like that since the first weeks in the Chantry, has not dreamed of Marjolaine at all in months. It is a sick weakness in her, that still, even now, she wants her bard-master's approval, wants her touch, like the ache of an amputated limb.

Aud squats back on her heels. Her face is planes of shadow. She is unarmoured, and seems smaller for it, a slight strength in shirt and trews, smelling - Leliana has noticed her scent from the very beginning - of stone and lightning beneath the sweaty, leather-and-steel odour that clings to her even after her armour is removed. "Not a good dream, I take it."

A statement, not a question. It is delivered in the perfectly mild, measuring tone Aud uses when she is at her most watchful. Leliana exhales, and, very carefully, lays her hand on Aud's forearm, feeling nubbed, worn linen and warm muscle under her palm. "Not good, no," she agrees, looking at Aud's face. The dwarf can see her clearly in this light, she knows, even though she can barely make out Aud's shape. "It was..." She hesitates, at a loss. How to explain Marjolaine? How to explain how much shame she feels for, then, having felt none?

Into the quiet, utterly flat, Aud says, "In Orzammar, I killed my brother." The corded muscles of her forearm tense and flex under Leliana's hand, singing with a tension that gives the lie to lack of expression in her voice. "For, essentially, politics."

"Your _brother_?" Leliana finds the thought of Aud as a murderer hard to credit. But there is no give in that iron tone.

"My brother," Aud says, quiet. With slight, bitter amusement: "It's how I came to join the Grey Wardens. Quite simply, I had nowhere else to go. So do you think _I_ will condemn _you _for your past, Leliana? Are you keeping worse secrets than kin-murder?"

Not worse. But there are so very _many._

"Marjolaine... Marjolaine was my teacher," she says, and swallows.

It will take a very long time to _properly _explain.


	7. Scars That Silence Carved

"Scars That Silence Carved"

_Title from Vienna Teng, "Gravity"._

_

* * *

_

Aud returns from Denerim market suffused with a harsh bitter bleakness.

The Gnawed Noble tavern is too public for their purposes, too wealthy, so Leliana waits in the upper room of a backstreet inn three narrow twisty alleys away from the Pearl, with only Morrigan and Sten - respectively sour and more than usually reticent at being surrounded by such civilisation as Denerim possesses - for company.

It is only the Warden's deadly serious caution that keeps her here, picking lice from the lining of her shirts - and truly, they _need _to get stronger herbs, since even with the help of Wynne's spells the fleabane doesn't seem to be working - ignoring Morrigan's occasional jabbing comments and the qunari's contempt, and cleaning her weapons. She has oiled her bow and tested her spare bowstrings three times already, and Andraste knows her blades are sharp enough when the door opens in a jangle of mail.

Aud is rigid and tense, the mabari coursing at her hip an unhappy reflection of her mood. From the set of her limbs it's obvious she's a hairsbreadth from violence. Alistair should have noticed that - and Leliana has a moment to wonder why he hasn't - but instead he's crowding at her shoulder, red and halfway to uncharacteristic anger. "Why didn't you tell me?" he's saying. "Aud? Aud! For the Maker's sake, why won't you sodding _answer _me already?"

Leliana hardly sees it. A flicker of movement, and Alistair is doubled over and gasping. "You _hit_ me," he says, when he can straighten, and the look he gives her is midway between worried and betrayed. "That really wasn't necessary, you know."

"I beg to differ," Morrigan drawls from her corner by the window. "'Tis eminently necessary. I am only surprised it took our faithful leader so long to recognise it." But her glance is watchful, wary as a feral thing.

Aud stands absolutely still, one hand fisted by her belt, the other clenched around the hilt of her sword. Her eyes are locked on Alistair's, ignoring Zevran as he enters like a gallant with Wynne on his arm.

"Tell him what?" Leliana asks, softly. "What is wrong, dear friend?" It must be something terrible, to have broken the dwarf's composure so. _Marjolaine? But it cannot be, not so soon -_

"Well?" Alistair says into the silence, challenging. "Are you going to tell her, or will I?"

Aud says nothing, but the bitterness in her silence...

"It seems our dear Warden is royalty, too." Zevran's tone might be light, but his glance is dark with knowing irony. "And I thought in Antiva we were hard on the scions of our nobility! Truly, Orzammar puts us to shame. Is that not so, Lady Aeducan?"

"Don't call me that." Aud, harsh-voiced, but speaking at last.

A raised eyebrow. "But, my lady -"

"_Not ever_, _Arainai_."

_Aeducan_. Leliana swallows, remembers a flat voice saying _In Orzammar - _"Your brother," she says, and doesn't flinch when four pairs of eyes swing in her direction. "That means your brother -"

"Trian was our father's heir," Aud says, shortly. Bleakly. "I killed him. The Assembly stripped my name from the Memories and sent me alone into the Deep Roads to die. The king my father permitted it. And now Gorim - Gorim tells me my father is _dead_."

_The-king-my-father_, said as though it were all one word. Leliana reaches, tentatively, to lay a hand on the Warden's arm. Aud allows it, though a muscle tightens in the other woman's jaw. _Into the Deep Roads to die._ The words hardly seem real.

It explains so much.

"The Deep Roads?" Alistair, hoarse and incredulous. "And you _lived_?"

"Duncan," Aud says wearily. Her fists unclench. Softly: "I found Duncan there. But what should I have told you, Alistair? That I'm a kin-murderer? That I was as good as dead long before I took part in the Joining?" The quirk of her mouth is bitter. "It is hardly as though who I was _matters_. Not any more."

"I -" He looks tormented and confused.

"Alistair." Leliana makes her voice gentle and firm. "Aud and I need to take a walk. If -" into Aud's suddenly sharp gold-dark glance "- the Warden will indulge me, that is?"

A little of the tension leaves Aud's shoulders. A thin, genuine smile cuts the bitterness on her lips. "Of course," she murmurs, and exhales. "We'll talk about this later, Alistair."

Or perhaps not at all.

* * *

The alley beside the inn stinks of piss and sewers and Maker knows what else, but at least it's empty. The noise of the city rattles on behind the houses. Leliana perches on a broken barrel and watches Aud fidget in sunlight attenuated between high four-storeyed buildings.

Aud _Aeducan_, by Andraste. No wonder she has a kingly charisma.

Strangely, Leliana is no longer dry-mouthed and febrile with fear. Not, at least, of Marjolaine. Oh, she is still afraid. It is only sensible to be a little afraid. But if the woman in front of her has faced the darkspawn in the dark paths below the earth and _survived _-

_Trust the Maker, Leliana_. _The Light will lead you safely through the paths of this world._

It's harder to trust, out here in the world, than it was in the silence of the Chantry in Lothering.

"You cannot lose your temper like that," she says, quietly. "Not again."

Aud leans back into the shadow of the inn, beside Leliana's barrel. The slanting light casts her face in stark planes, a study in contrasts. Long eyelashes lie dark on her cheeks: she has closed her eyes. "I know."

Barely a murmur, that. And: "I'm tired," the Warden says, without opening her eyes. "So tired, Leliana. Seeing Gorim again, what he had to tell me - it was everything I'd lost. Everything that's gone forever, no matter what I do."

It's hard, being strong. Even harder, being the beacon of strength, the foundation of certainty, on which they are all leaning. It is Aud who holds them together, a visionary burning with the ice of conviction, driven by the spurs of the archdemon's nightmares. Ferelden - _Thedas _- cannot afford for them to fail, so Aud will not _let _them.

That simple.

Leliana should have known better than to imagine _anything_ was ever _that simple_. Aud is mortal, like the rest of them. With mortal pains and mortal vulnerabilities.

Just this once, she will indulge her treacherous longing. Just this once, she will put her arms around the woman in front of her.

Aud is armour and muscle, all ridges and hardness. She fits within the curve of Leliana's body as though she belongs there, warm and smelling faintly of sweat and thunderstorms and old stone. The crown of her head comes just below Leliana's chin.

The embrace is one thing. The kiss -

That, Leliana did _not _expect.

"Aud -" she manages, around the catch in her throat. _Andraste help me, I think I could love you._

"Dear bard," the Warden says, and the expression on her lips has too much of sorrow to be a smile.

* * *

They beard Marjolaine in her lair that night.

* * *

_I think there will be maybe one or two more vignettes to this_, _at most. All comments welcome._


	8. An Old And Waning Moon

_This one sits between "Scars That Silence Carved" and shortly after "Like A Burning City." Come full circle, or something roughly circle-like. Full ovoid? Full wobbly hypersphere, maybe._

* * *

**1****8. "An Old and Waning Moon"**

_Title from Richard Thompson, "King of Bohemia."_

_Your eyes seem from a different face  
They've seen that much that soon  
Your cheek too cold, too pale to shine  
Like an old and waning moon._

_And there is no peace, no true release  
No secret place to crawl  
And there is no rest for the ones god blessed  
And he blessed you best of all._

_

* * *

_

###

_The Frostback Mountains, near the village of Haven._

###

The air is cold in the Frostbacks. At dawn the scrubby grass is glassy-sheened with ice, and in the black rock-toothed passes the north wind blows sharp enough to slice sensation from their cheeks. At night they pitch tents close together for shelter and the sound of hoarse, wracking coughs follows them into chilly dreams. Warm-blooded Zevran complains lyrically for the first few days, giving long encomiums on the warmth and beauty of Antiva that make Leliana think longingly of strangling him in his sleep, before he subsides into a grim and determined silence.

It's not yet winter, and it's _cold._

But for the first time in years, Leliana is happy.

The long journey from Denerim has let her come to terms with many things. Her past. Marjolaine's death, and her part in it. Perhaps even her future. The Chantry felt like it could be home, for a time, but now -

Now there is Aud, marching tirelessly into the teeth of the wind: fearlessly into the heart of the coming storm. Neither tireless nor fearless, in the end, but resolved to do her duty to the very bittermost limit of mortal endurance, and beyond.

Leliana has shared her tent since the first time they made love, under the haunted late-summer eaves of the Brescilian Forest, their armour still stained with sap and werewolf blood, the Dalish mourning Zathrian and the humans free of his curse. _Just this once_, Aud said, fierce and laughing. _Just this once, we made peace, not war, _and for the first time, the other woman's kiss led to something more.

But hardly the last.

By now she knows the dwarf as well as she has ever known another. Aud's curiosity, so often carefully restrained lest it be seen as weakness; the ruthless and penetrating intelligence she brings to bear on each new problem side by side with the ferocious urgency that frequently tempts her to take the shortest route through every obstacle, and damn the corpses; a self-deprecating humour and a quiet, patient kindness hidden beneath her hard, hawkish features. What she feels for the dwarf is different to what she felt for Marjolaine. To Aud she is an equal, an ally, a _peer_: someone of whom much will be asked, but never more than Aud herself is prepared to give.

If it is love, it is a love grown up with the knowledge that at any time either of them might have to die. That knowledge has intertwined sorrow with the roots of their affection, and so there are no promises between them. None, save the one Leliana has made in the silence of her heart.

_I will love you, dear Warden. For as long as you will let me._

* * *

Andraste's holy ashes. For a heartbeat the Guardian makes her doubt herself, makes her doubt the Maker that has led her to Aud's company, led this company _here_. But it is a _test_. Of course it is a test, and she will choose to trust the speaking certainty of the rose and the still, quiet murmur in her soul she can yet sometimes feel, when she tries. She will choose to trust the miracle and the hope of light and life and beauty. She will choose, because it is that choice she clings to in the dark watches of the night when sleep evades her and she finds herself too close akin to Marjolaine for her comfort.

There are still miracles in the world. This is the proof of them.

From the moment they enter the Gauntlet a silent grace surrounds them. Time has hallowed the stones. Time, and loneliness: theirs might be the first feet to tread the dust since Tevinter's fall. Morrigan is inclined to mutter, and Sten is his usual taciturn self, but even Zevran's high humours seem to have been subdued to something approaching decorum.

Aud's methodical caution seems as out of place in the hush of ancient secrets, long-kept as their jarring steel and bloodstained leather. But when she removes her armour before the burning fire - heat that crackles on the skin, a searing, burning heat - when she disrobes, and lays aside her weapons, and walks brutally lean and scarred and teeth-grittingly resolute through the wall of flame -

The air is full of mysteries and holy ashes and light, and Leliana feels the hand of grace like a feather inside her chest.

* * *

The road before them is long and full of burdens. It is not possible to walk through a war and come out unscathed: the worst days will be bitter and filled with blood and sacrifice and grief; the choice of evils and bad compromises. And they will have to pick up their packs and kept walking into the teeth of the wind, into the face of the Blight.

It should not be possible for Leliana to be this _content_.

In the darkness of their chill tent, thin furs between them and the hard ground, Leliana curls her body against Aud's beneath their shared blankets and watches her lover's sleeping face. Warmth radiates from Aud's muscled flesh, hot with the pulse of tainted blood. Her mouth twitches in her sleep, the tension of nightmares always most evident there and in the tightness of her jaw. But for now all those muscles are loose and relaxed in true, restful slumber, and in the dimness Leliana can look her fill.

The warmth rooted in her belly is a tender pain. She will choose to trust it, as she chose in Lothering to trust the Maker's gift, in the hope of better days to come.

* * *

_"Love Is Not All"  
__  
__Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink  
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;  
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink  
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;  
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,  
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;  
Yet many a man is making friends with death  
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.  
It well may be that in a difficult hour,  
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,  
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,  
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,  
Or trade the memory of this night for food.  
It well may be. I do not think I would. __  
__  
-Edna St. Vincent Millay._

_Finis._

_(grammaticus non me fecit)  
_

_

* * *

_

###

_And "Like A Burning City" has come to its close. Thanks to you guys who read and reviewed and added to favourites - especially Snafu1000 and _

_Ledilettant, whose reviews provided much-needed encouragement to finish this thing._

_I hope you enjoyed reading. I know I enjoyed writing._


End file.
